


Red

by alitbitmoody



Series: Stoplight (Prompts) [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Ghost Drifting, Holidays, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, Married Couple, New Year's Eve, Newton Geiszler Recovery Arc, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Separation Anxiety, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 03:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16338962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alitbitmoody/pseuds/alitbitmoody
Summary: Newt's first New Year's Eve since being rescued.





	Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Basilintime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basilintime/gifts).



> From the [Drabble Challenge](https://prompt-bank.tumblr.com/post/152084082678/drabble-challenge): **Prompt 49. “Safety first. What are you? FIVE?”**

New Year’s Eve in the Shatterdome had always being a jumping affair: music, dancing, usually drinking if everyone was off the clock and the higher-ups had given the all-clear. People snatching small isolated pockets of bliss and camaraderie in between catastrophes.

On this particular New Year’s, the various crews had all pooled their various care packages in the middle of the mess hall tables, sorting them into smaller boxes for passing between tables as the benches filled up. Alcohol, candied sweets, junk food from the Americas, UK, every country of origin on a base with nearly 200 people from twenty-one different countries.

Newt bypassed the alcohol and went for the sweet and salty — nearly losing a hand to his young escort’s obsession with spicy Voodoo chips. Vik looked startled as her nails swiped across the back of his hand, eyes wide with apology while still shoving the foil packet into her jacket as quickly as she could. He just laughed and grabbed a handful of packets from the UK box  -- playing the odds that he would grab something that Hermann liked.

Hermann had walked him to the mess hall and sat with him on the bench for more than an hour, before disappearing into a conversation with the elder and younger Beckets over robotics, the Turing test, and NASA’s history of resistance to science denial. The thrilling pulse he’d felt during the whole of that conversation had waned, leaving something… more circumspect, albeit still full of wonder; warring with Newt’s own escalating anxiety at realizing that, apart from his young cadet friend, he was pretty much alone.

“Hey. Does anyone else smell…strontium carbonate?”

"Что это?" 

"Оно не пахнет for one thing _._ Excuse me, Vik. I think it’s getting close to midnight.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, uh, just need a minute. Excuse me.”

There was a twinge in his hip as he stood up, shooting down towards his knee with each step toward the hall, and outside to the Jaeger bay, chasing the familiar echo. A familiar pair of hands braced his arms as he rounded the corner, nearly knocking into the taller figure.

Liwen Shao dressed impeccably even for an all-night party -- the white linen jacket was different from the black silk Newt remembered seeing her in earlier that day. Someday he would have to ask her (in isolation, over dinner if possible) if the layers and constant changes and tweaks over the course of the day were due to anxiety-related discomfort; one more thing they had in common.

“ _Shit!_ Sorry, Liwen!” he asked, stifling the pun about being bowled over that had popped up, unbidden in his brain. He fiddled with the zipper on his parka instead. “‘You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she commented, dropping her hands. “You’ve wandered a bit far from the festivities.”

“Yeah, I seem to have lost my husband. Have you seen him?”

She nodded toward the stairwell -- the one that started after on the third floor, up three flights of scaffolding before ascended to the upper floors and, at the top, the roof. Well, Newt thought, that definitely explained the leg pain.

“Figures,” he grinned. “Don’t let him fool you. He may dress like a math professor from 1940, but that man never met a catwalk he didn’t like. ‘You heading up, too?”

She shook her head.

“Going back to the—?”

Another head shake.

“Right. Just... looking for a spot away from everybody?”

 Liwen committed to no answer and a neutral-to-positive gaze, which, after nine months of face to face communication, he had learned to take as an affirmative.

“Okay, well, the main lab should be empty. If it’s not, you are one of maybe three people keyed to _my_ office,” he paused. “Caitlin might wander in a bit later but uh, otherwise you should be good.”

“You’re a transparent matchmaker,” she replied, a hint of a smile buried in the flat admonishment.

"It’s not matchmaking if I didn’t know you were going to be in the same place at the same time!” he smirked, as he moved toward the stairs. Though, he privately had to admit it was a convenient coincidence. They were both brilliant, Lightcap had been a widow for almost four years and, well, he was playing the odds on that one, too. “Tea’s in the drop drawer of my desk. Left-hand side. She likes two sugars!”

If Liwen had a response for that one, the echoing clatter of Newt’s boots on the corrugated steps quickly drowned it out.

\--

  
Even closed up for the night, the Jaeger bay was flooded with familiar smells that carried up the scaffolding, catwalks, and through the rooftop vents -- burning carbon, electrons, old steel, the ever present threat of accidental thermite. He loved it, loved the weight of the childhood memories and wonder that hadn’t been his but were now as much a part of him as Lake Como and cephalopods.  
  
Hermann was already facing him when Newt pushed the heavy door open and staggered out onto the roof-top observation deck. He could feel his already shortened breath dry up mid-inhale as he took in his partner’s figure, leaning on his cane and haloed in red by the emergency lights that lined the back wall and the distant glow of the base below them.

The passion had always been there, if deliberately buried. But the speed and fervor with which it had re-emerged nine months ago had taken even Newt by surprise as he came back into full awareness and ownership of his body and identity. He had fretted briefly about transference, misdirected grief, processing anger and trauma while in recovery. Hermann, uncharacteristically, had been the one to abandon all caution and jump right in. For that, Newt would always be grateful.

“There you are,” his husband smiled.

“Dude, we are so taking the service elevator _back down_ ,” he said by way of greeting. He suspected Hermann had already taken it at least part of the way up, otherwise he would be less vertical and more visibly pained.

Hermann nodded. “When we’re ready.”

“You’re not ready _now_?”

“No, _mum_ ,” he droned. “I’m wired. I’ve smoked two cigarettes, I’ve had two milk tea lattes in a paper cup from Korea, and I want to look at the stars.”

Newton laughed. Early in their working relationship, Hermann’s more casual tone and use of English slang had popped up sporadically almost under duress -- when they particularly harried or had a particularly bad fight. Nowadays, it slipped through unnoticed, any lingering self-consciousness gone.

It was... _stirring_ , to say the least.

“You sound more and more like me every day,” he teased, moving to stand next to him.

“Bite your tongue.”

“ _You_ bite it.” Newt’s arm shot out as Hermann leaned too close to the outer ledge wall for his liking.“Hey now! Safety first. What are you? _Five?_ ”  
  
"I was considerably older the first time I came up here."

"I know! We all know. You and Amara were squeeing so much about the Mark I’s the other night, I couldn’t hear _Godzilla_ ,” he laughed.

“‘Squeeing?’”

“ _‘Squeeing._ It fits,” he reiterated. “Take one more step back from the edge here and you can have the rhubarb and custard I fought a Russian to get for you.”

“Fought?”

“Well, ‘fought’ is a strong word. I grabbed it when she was distracted by some chips from New Orleans.”  
  
Hermann smirked, taking the step back, the fingers on his free hand reaching to grab Newt’s waist. “Well done, then. Did you get anything for yourself?”

“Oh, were you not planning to share?” he smirked. “Some root beer barrels. And a packet of astronaut ice cream. Because I’m thinking it’s probably going to be a while before our next trip to the planetarium.”

“It might be sooner than you think. Mei has taken an early interest in astrophysics.”

Newt blinked. “...that’s… impressive for a six-year-old.”  
  
“Agreed. Mako and Raleigh are nurturing the interest and have asked for some encouragement in that area.”  
  
Which meant they might inevitably be invoked for “uncle’s duties:” specifically spoiling and providing educational materials and toys. Newt was all for it. Was more prone to being for it than the majority of the people he knew, apart from maybe Hermann and Liwen.  
  
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Newt smiled. “I’m officially back on the payroll as of a few weeks ago, so, I can probably find her a good telescope. Like a starter model for the young astronomer dealing with light pollution from the city? That could be good--”

Hermann stopped him with a kiss; lips warm, damp with the acrid taste of tobacco, a hint of bergamot from the milk tea. Newt’s eyes fluttered shut instinctively.

It had to be the _‘I know,’_ he thought. 

Not _'I remember'_ \-- Dr. Newton Geiszler was still at MIT the year Hermann coded the Mark I jaegers and proceeded to sign up for the newly created Jaeger Academy.

Not _‘you told me’_ \-- because Hermann’s correspondence (From Berlin, from Kodiak Island, from Vladivostok…) dripped with code and the stars and echoes of the machinery melded with human biology that Newt had rhapsodized about in his own letters, but few personal details. Hermann had included a polaroid of the July 4th fireworks with one letter -- but never elaborated on the truly epic climb he had to make to the roof to take it.

 _'I know.’_ Because Newton knew everything about Hermann now, in all the ways that mattered and all the ways that had evaded the verbal communication his husband had always found so troublesome. As much as he tried to deny it, he knew Hermann relished those small moments of recognition -- small parts of himself mirrored back -- like the way Newt made tea. The knowledge itself was mechanistic and a decade and a half in the making, but Hermann had never seen Newt take a drink of it himself until after the first war. Now that he was finally home, he had a habit of prepping two cups each morning before they went on shift.

“What are you doing?” he broke away laughing as a long-fingered hand groped for his pocket.

“You said rhubarb and custard… Newton, this is dolly mix!”

“Is it?” he asked, glancing at the label. “Huh. Oops. Is there a difference?”

“Never mind,” Hermann laughed as he pulled back and Newt chased, smashing their lips together once more; fondness telegraphed across their neural link in warm waves. Newt slid his arms inside Hermann’s open jacket, squeezed his waist.

“Man, my hip is _killing me_ ,” he murmured. “You’re not going to be able to get out of bed for days after this.”

“Worth it, though,” Hermann purred, nipping his lower lip.

“Worth it to me, too. It’s my favorite spot for you, you know.”

“Really?”

“One of them. I like you in the lab, too. And here. Just _the space you occupy on the planet_ , in general, is my favorite spot. Overall.”

They both looked up as pink and red sparks struck overhead; small explosions of carbon and nitrogen, branching out to blue and green.

“There they go,” he smiled.

“I take it midnight -- and the new year -- are upon us,” Hermann replied, eyes oddly misty.

“Must be.”

“Do you have any resolutions this year?”

He blinked slowly, thinking back to the hastily scribbled list in his desk.

“Nothing big: go to therapy. Go to my appointments with Caitlin. Work the data, try not to fall… _all the way down._ Like before,” he blinked the dark thought away, pivoting to a more pleasant subject. “And see if I get around to being allowed to dissect anything!”

Hermann nodded. “A sound plan, that.”

“What about you?”

“Already done. The one thing that mattered anyway,” he smiled, and Newt’s mind briefly flashed to their wedding in August -- Mako, Tendo, a rabbi (to appease Hermann’s family) and fifty of their nearest and dearest, some whom turned up in uniform, straight from their shifts.“I suppose a proper honeymoon. That could be something to aim for this year.”

“Maybe. I kind of want to get to a place where I can spend more than ten minutes without you, first,” Newt said. Most days, he was happy to make it from one floor to the other, always with someone holding his hand or providing a warm presence at his elbow. A honeymoon _might_ be okay, so long as Hermann didn’t find another bit of scaffolding to climb on his own, leaving Newt to scramble after him.

“Planetarium?”

“Seems like a good place to start,” he said, leaning in.

The great thing about kissing Hermann at this time -- at the age they were and after everything they had been through -- was the lack of hesitance; the fearlessness, everything extraneous burned away; leaving want and the room to enjoy it.

The exterior wall was cold against his back as Hermann pressed into him, broad shoulders providing some cover as he held on to his husband’s waist. There was a puff of hot steel and aromatic rust from the vent next to his head, clashing with the citrus-mint smell of Hermann’s pomade, mixed with sweat. He breathed in deeply, pulling the taller man in closer as the zipper on his parka slid down, cool air rushing in along with his husband’s roving hands.

They were so involved, they nearly missed the door opening with a slam against the opposite wall.

“Whoa.”

" _Shit._ " Newton ducked his head as they broke apart, not looking up as Amara spoke.

“Erm... guys? You know this is a public area... right?”

“Quite right, Miss Namani,” Hermann said, voice stern and authoritative. “It’s also barred to cadets. Go back downstairs.”

The door slammed shut, reverberating over aggrieved consonants in multiple tones of voice and, he thought, at least one Russian curse.

“Sure. Remind them that they’re cadets. That’s going to go well,” Newton remarked, getting his breath back. “You know they’re just going to come back up here the second we’re gone!”

“And, by then, we will be back in our quarters,” Hermann replied. “Plausible deniability.”

“Oh. Ooh, I love it when you talk like that -- sounds so _sexy_.”

“Quarters, Newton. _Now_.”

He took his husband’s hand, favoring his left, non-twinging side as they made their way back toward the stairwell.  
  
"Happy New Year."

**Author's Note:**

> “Что это такое?” = "What's that?"  
> “Это без запаха" = "It's odorless."  
> (This translation courtesy of Google Translate. If it's in error, please let me know.)
> 
> Strontium carbonate is a odorless, tasteless metal salt used in red fireworks. 
> 
> Caitlin Lightcap's presence at the Shatterdome and her status as a widow are both features in my ongoing [Tattoo 'Verse](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1090371) series, but this can be read as a standalone story. 
> 
> Hermann's grab from the care packages was a Maeil pre-packaged latte. They come in a paper cup with a telescopic straw and are basically a juice box for over-caffeinated adults. 10/10 recommend. He is also right to be put out by Newt mixing up rhubarb and custard with dolly mix -- they are nowhere near the same, lol. Both delicious, though.


End file.
